Assignment White Rajah

by Edward S. Aarons

  "Yes?" Hammond asked.

  "You sent Parepa with me with orders to kill me. You weren't sure how much I knew or suspected. But Parepa picked up the phrase buddy-wuddy from you and used it, giving himself away."

  It was quiet in the room now. Hammond didn't move in his chair, except to raise the cigar to his mouth. The smoke curled through the darkness and touched Durell's nostrils. Durell inhaled deeply.

  "Go ahead."

  "I knew it wasn't Paul who was the Judas pilot all the time. It had to be someone else sometimes, flying alternate nights. The first time I heard a Thrasher go over, Paul was right there with Pala Mir at her river house. But you weren't in Pasangara; you were gone all day. It's just a short flight in the Beechcraft, just an hour from the mountain to the city. I checked you out, George. You can fly a Thrasher better than most. You had jet training in '64, for the Kurd project you ran in Syria. There were two Judas pilots who lured the Navy planes down here—Paul and you."

  Hammond kept silent.

  "You still saw a chance to come out of it all right," DureU added, "even after I arrived. If you could scrub Paul and Lily Fan, you'd be a hero to K Section, right back on top where you wanted to be. It was the chance you'd been waiting for, for years. Either way, with us or them, you thought you'd win. If you could kill me, you could still play the other side of the coin and run things with Paul and the Pao Thets. If not, you were right back in K Section. You wanted to have your cake and eat it, too." Durell sighed. "But you can't, George. I won't let you."

  "Have you reported all this?" Hammond asked softly.

  "Yes, I have."

  Hammond inhaled his cigar and blew the smoke out with a soft hissing sound. His voice was calm. "If it didn't work, I figured I'd be back in K Section as a hero, great old George, a real tiger. And if it did work, I'd be running things in Pasangara. A Red Rajah, as you say. It seemed pretty good to me. I've been out in the boonies too long to retire, Cajun. They'll do the same thing to you one day."

  "Perhaps."

  "Have you had any return orders about me?"

  "Yes," Durell said. "You are to be eliminated, as the office says, with extreme prejudice."

  Hammond was silent for a moment.

  "Tough on you, Cajun," he said.

  "Yes."

  "You don't want to do it."

  "But I will."

  "Yeah. I know you will. Anyway, you'll try." Hammond sat quietly for a long moment. Then he stood up and limped across the darkly shadowed room, stared at the window, stared at the muzzle of Durell's gun that had followed his every move. The cigar end glowed redly again. He said quietly, "We're all fools, playing a fool's game. We think we know what we're doing, but somebody else is always pulling the strings. I guess the loneliness here, the kind of exile it's been for me—through no fault of my own, I might add—^made me go a bit wiggy. I felt it was an injustice, Cajun. I've always been the same man I was before they got to me in East Germany."

  "Not quite," Durell said.

  "Maybe not for a little time. But lately— "

  "Lately you've been working for them, not us."

  Hammond took the cigar from his mouth and stared at it. Durell could see no expression in the dark pools of his eyes.

  "I'll save you the trouble, Sam," he said quietly. "I could take you, I think, even with your gun on me. But I'd have no place to go after that. And I don't want to hurt you, Cajun. It's the job, the business, that makes us stay here in this room and do what we're doing to each other. All of a sudden, I'm sick of it. I'm tired. I've lost. I hope some day if it ever gets to be your turn, you get a break, Sam. I hope so but it won't happen."

  Hammond put the cigar in his mouth, showed his teeth in a strange smile, and then bit down savagely on the end of it.

  Durell heard the crunch of the poison capsule in the tip of the cigar. He didn't move.

  A minute later, Hammond was dead.

  28

  The Kuan Diop Hotel had returned to normal the evening after Hammond's death. Durell had spent the day at the consulate with David Condon, filing and encoding his last reports, arranging for the transfer of the Navy pilots and the planes back up north. He had received a brief interview with Premier Kuang in which polite formality prevailed. Lily Fan was being sent off to school. Nothing was said about Durell's presence at the guerrilla mountain headquarters, and only murmured regrets were expressed about Hammond's death.

  Colonel Tileong called at the hotel and was more specific. Durell told him as Httle as possible. Durell inquired about the Rajah and was informed that the old gentleman had barred himself in his dilapidated waterfront palace and was seeing no one.

  "It is a tragedy," Tileong said gently. His brown face was bland. "We in Pasangara are all very fond of him. He had high hopes of his grandson's becoming a poUtical presence, so to speak, in the province. But, of course, that would never have been permitted."

  "I understand," Durell nodded.

  "As for my lieutenant, Parepa—I understand you were with him when he died?"

  "A brave man. Colonel."

  "Ah, yes. Ambitious as well, I always thought." Tileong paused. "We have listed his death as being at the hands of the Pao Thets. He died bravely. Now the city is calm, eh? One does not stir the caldron without need, eh?"

  Durell murmured something, and Tileong asked when he would be leaving. Durell told him it would be the next day, then asked about Pala Mir.

  "She is with the Rajah. I doubt very much if she will allow any visitors, Nlr. Durell." Tileong's brown eyes understood him. "You are fond of her, and she has been much mahgned. A pity she has no one to console her."

  Durell was in his shower when he heard the rap on his hotel room door. It was past nine in the evening, and he had ordered a bottle of bourbon from the bar downstairs, which was crowded as usual with Chinese, Dutch, English, and Indian merchants. He was looking at the prospect of a soUtary evening with some sleep until nine in the morning, when a shuttle plane would take him to Kuala Lumpur and then onward to the States. But it was not a skirted hotel servant who appeared in the corridor when he opened the door.

  Pala Mir stood there.

  She smiled.

  "Hello, Sam."

  "Hello."

  "May I come in?"

  "Of course."

  He was conscious of his worn, gray bathrobe, his wet hair. She was dressed in a silver sari trinuned with violet, and she wore a narrow diadem of amethysts that matched the colors embroidered on the sari. Silver slippers were on her feet. Her peach skin was without makeup; she needed none. The shght tilt of her Eurasian eyes crinkled with faint amusement.

  "Weren't you expecting me, Sam?"

  "Frankly, no."

  "I came on behalf of the Rajah. He regrets the necessity that forced him to do—^what he did, about Paul."

  Durell said, "But Paul was your twin brother."

  "Grandpapa always said that Paul was the evil half of me. If that implies that I am good—" She shrugged and smiled. "I think I'm not. I do not mourn Paul, you see. What he did was barbarous, the worst treachery against all of us in Pasangara." She paused. "Do you mourn Mr. Hammond, Sam?"

  "In some ways."

  "Yes . . . You look uncomfortable, Sam."

  He was aware of his dripping figure, the old robe. "I was just—alone," he said. "Waiting for my plane, tomorrow."

  "In something like twelve hours," she murmured. "You will really leave then?"

  "I must."

  "Twelve hours can be a lifetime," Pala Mir said. "I seem to be overdressed for the occasion."

  She did something to the silver sari, and it came apart in a heap at her feet. Then, smiling, she walked toward him.

  Durell turned off the lights.

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  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Pages

  Back Cover

  s, Assignment White Rajah